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| 4.017 Ft
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| 1. | Come Sunday
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| 2. | My Foolish Heart
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| 3. | Nightingale
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| 4. | My Ship
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| 5. | Portrait of Jenny
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| 6. | Judy
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| 7. | 'Round Midnight
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| 8. | Someday My Prince Will Come
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| 9. | A Sleepin' Bee
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| 10. | Goodbye
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Jazz
Oscar Peterson
Active Decades: '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Aug 15, 1925 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died: Dec 23, 2007 in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Bop, Swing, Mainstream Jazz
Oscar Peterson was one of the greatest piano players of all time. A pianist with phenomenal technique on the level of his idol, Art Tatum, Peterson's speed, dexterity, and ability to swing at any tempo were amazing. Very effective in small groups, jam sessions, and in accompanying singers, O.P. was at his absolute best when performing unaccompanied solos. His original style did not fall into any specific idiom. Like Erroll Garner and George Shearing, Peterson's distinctive playing formed during the mid- to late '40s and fell somewhere between swing and bop. Peterson was criticized through the years because he used so many notes, didn't evolve much since the 1950s, and recorded a remarkable number of albums. Perhaps it is because critics ran out of favorable adjectives to use early in his career; certainly it can be said that Peterson played 100 notes when other pianists might have used ten, but all 100 usually fit, and there is nothing wrong with showing off technique when it serves the music. As with Johnny Hodges and Thelonious Monk, to name two, Peterson spent his career growing within his style rather than making any major changes once his approach was set, certainly an acceptable way to handle one's career. Because he was Norman Granz's favorite pianist (along with Tatum) and the producer tended to record some of his artists excessively, Peterson made an incredible number of albums. Not all are essential, and a few are routine, but the great majority are quite excellent, and there are dozens of classics.
Peterson started classical piano lessons when he was six and developed quickly. After winning a talent show at 14, he began starring on a weekly radio show in Montreal. Peterson picked up early experience as a teenager playing with Johnny Holmes' Orchestra. From 1945-1949, he recorded 32 selections for Victor in Montreal. Those trio performances find Peterson displaying a love for boogie-woogie, which he would soon discard, and the swing style of Teddy Wilson and Nat King Cole. His technique was quite brilliant even at that early stage, and although he had not yet been touched by the influence of bop, he was already a very impressive player. Granz discovered Peterson in 1949 and soon presented him as a surprise guest at a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert. Peterson was recorded in 1950 on a series of duets with either Ray Brown or Major Holley on bass; his version of "Tenderly" became a hit. Peterson's talents were quite obvious, and he became a household name in 1952 when he formed a trio with guitarist Barney Kessel and Brown. Kessel tired of the road and was replaced by Herb Ellis the following year. The Peterson-Ellis-Brown trio, which often toured with JATP, was one of jazz's great combos from 1953-1958. Their complex yet swinging arrangements were competitive -- Ellis and Brown were always trying to outwit and push the pianist -- and consistently exciting. In 1958, when Ellis left the band, it was decided that no other guitarist could fill in so well, and he was replaced (after a brief stint by Gene Gammage) by drummer Ed Thigpen. In contrast to the earlier group, the Peterson-Brown-Thigpen trio (which lasted until 1965) found the pianist easily the dominant soloist. Later versions of the group featured drummers Louis Hayes (1965-1966), Bobby Durham (1967-1970), Ray Price (1970), and bassists Sam Jones (1966-1970) and George Mraz (1970).
In 1960, Peterson established the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto, which lasted for three years. He made his first recorded set of unaccompanied piano solos in 1968 (strange that Granz had not thought of it) during his highly rated series of MPS recordings. With the formation of the Pablo label by Granz in 1972, Peterson was often teamed with guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels Pedersen. He appeared on dozens of all-star records, made five duet albums with top trumpeters (Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Clark Terry, and Jon Faddis), and teamed up with Count Basie on several two-piano dates. An underrated composer, Peterson wrote and recorded the impressive "Canadiana Suite" in 1964 and has occasionally performed originals in the years since. Although always thought of as a masterful acoustic pianist, Peterson has also recorded on electric piano (particularly some of his own works), organ on rare occasions, and even clavichord for an odd duet date with Joe Pass. One of his rare vocal sessions in 1965, With Respect to Nat, reveals that Peterson's singing voice was nearly identical to Nat King Cole's. A two-day reunion with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown in 1990 (which also included Bobby Durham) resulted in four CDs. Peterson was felled by a serious stroke in 1993 that knocked him out of action for two years. He gradually returned to the scene, however, although with a weakened left hand. Even when he wasn't 100 percent, Peterson was a classic improviser, one of the finest musicians that jazz has ever produced. The pianist appeared on an enormous number of records through the years. As a leader, he has recorded for Victor, Granz's Clef and Verve labels (1950-1964), MPS, Mercury, Limelight, Pablo, and Telarc.
--- Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
Nelson Riddle
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s
Born: Jun 01, 1921 in Oradell, NJ
Died: Oct 06, 1985 in Los Angeles, CA
Genre: Easy
Styles: Orchestral Pop, TV Soundtracks, Film Music, Traditional Pop, Television Music
Nelson Riddle was quite possibly the greatest arranger in the history of American popular music. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he was also a popular soundtrack composer, a conductor, a trombonist, and an occasional hitmaker in his own right. He worked with many of the major pop vocalists of his day, but it was his immortal work with Frank Sinatra, particularly on the singer's justly revered Capitol concept albums, that cemented Riddle's enduring legacy. Riddle was a master of mood and subtlety, and an expert at drawing out a song's emotional subtext. He was highly versatile in terms of style, mood, and tempo, and packed his charts full of rhythmic and melodic variations and rich tonal colors that blended seamlessly behind the lead vocal line. He often wrote specifically for individual vocalists, keeping their strengths and limitations in mind and pushing them to deliver emotionally resonant performances. As such, Riddle was perfectly suited to the task of framing vocal interpreters, as opposed to just singers; he was most in sync with the more nuanced and artistically ambitious vocalists, like Sinatra. Riddle knew how to lay back and bring certain lyrics or vocal subtleties to the forefront, and how to add countermelodies that emphasized other lyrics, or made important transitions. He could draw the listener in with catchy embellishments, challenge them with adventurous harmonies, and build to climaxes that faded into surprisingly restrained endings. In short, Riddle was everything a top-notch singer could ask for.
Nelson Smock Riddle was born June 1, 1921, in Oradell, NJ. His father was an amateur musician who performed in a local band, and Riddle learned classical piano as a child, later switching to trombone at age 14. Debussy and Ravel were favorites early on, though he also listened to pop music and big-band swing. In 1940, he joined Jerry Wald's dance orchestra as trombonist and arranger; the following year, he moved on to Charlie Spivak's band, leaving to join the merchant marine in 1943. Exiting the service, he spent 1944-1945 as a trombonist with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, also writing a couple of arrangements ("Laura," "I Should Care"). In 1946, he returned to the New York area, where he arranged for big bands like the Elgart Brothers and Elliot Lawrence. By year's end, however, he had decided to relocate to Los Angeles, where he landed a job as an arranger for Bob Crosby. From there he moved on to become a staff arranger at NBC Radio in 1947, also composing background music for dramatic programs, and continued to study arranging and conducting with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Victor Young.
Riddle caught his first big break when Les Baxter recruited him to ghostwrite a few arrangements for Nat King Cole. One of Riddle's efforts, "Mona Lisa," became Cole's biggest hit ever in 1950 (though it was credited to Baxter). "Too Young" was another huge success in 1951, and Cole hired Riddle as his primary arranger; that relationship would endure for over a decade and produce classics like "Unforgettable." In 1952, Riddle wrote an arrangement of "The Blacksmith Blues" for Ella Mae Morse that turned even more heads at Capitol; soon, the label hired him on as an in-house arranger.
When Frank Sinatra signed with Capitol in 1953, the label encouraged him to work with the up-and-coming Riddle; Sinatra was reluctant, initially wanting to remain loyal to his chief Columbia arranger, Axel Stordahl. He soon recognized the freshness of Riddle's approach, however, and eventually came to regard Riddle as his most sympathetic collaborator. The first song they cut together was "I've Got the World on a String," and as Sinatra moved into the LP format, Riddle became a hugely important collaborator. Sinatra wanted to record conceptually unified albums that created consistent moods, and Riddle's arrangements had to draw out the emotional subtext of the material Sinatra chose. Riddle's work was alternately romantic (the 10" LPs Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy), desolate and intimate (In the Wee Small Hours, Only the Lonely), or confident and hard-swinging (Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, A Swingin' Affair!). The results were some of the finest and most celebrated albums in the history of popular music.
Capitol signed Riddle as an artist in his own right during the early '50s; leading his own orchestra, he recorded a series of albums (upward of ten) geared for the easy listening audience. In 1956, he scored a breakout hit single with "Lisbon Antigua," an instrumental of European origin that climbed all the way to number one on the pop charts. The follow-up "Port au Prince" made the Top 20, as did two albums, 1957's Hey...Let Yourself Go! and 1958's C'mon...Get Happy!. Plus, his 1958 composition "Cross Country Suite" won him his first Grammy. As the '50s wore on, Riddle got increasingly involved in the motion picture industry, thanks in part to Sinatra; he worked on the scores for the Sinatra films Johnny Concho (1956), Pal Joey (1957), A Hole in the Head (1959), and Come Blow Your Horn (1963), plus the Rat Pack vehicles Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Branching out into other film projects, he worked on the W.C. Handy biopic St. Louis Blues (1958) and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and earning Oscar nominations for his scores for Li'l Abner (1959) and the Cole Porter musical Can-Can (1960). He also served as the musical director on variety shows starring Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Rosemary Clooney.
In addition to Riddle's 1950s associations with Sinatra and Cole, he wrote arrangements for -- among others -- Betty Hutton, Jimmy Wakely, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, and Judy Garland, the latter of whom turned in two of her finest interpretive albums in 1956's Judy and 1958's Judy in Love under Riddle's guidance. At the end of the decade, he began a fruitful relationship with Ella Fitzgerald, cutting two sessions with his orchestra backing her up (Ella Swings Brightly With Nelson and Ella Swings Gently With Nelson) and contributing extensively to her mammoth Songbooks series, particularly the Gershwin, Kern, and Mercer volumes. Over the course of the '60s, Riddle went on to work with the likes of Rosemary Clooney (1960's Rosie Solves the Swingin' Riddle), Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Al Martino, Johnny Mathis (1961's I'll Buy You a Star), Shirley Bassey (1962's Let's Face the Music), Billy Eckstine, Jack Jones, Eddie Fisher, Keely Smith, and many, many others. His last full album with Sinatra was 1966's Strangers in the Night, on which Riddle's feel for contemporary pop in the post-rock & roll age helped Sinatra regain his commercial standing.
Meanwhile, Riddle continued his soundtrack work, crafting some of his most notable material for television. He wrote the distinctive theme for The Untouchables in 1959, and his theme song to the series Route 66 was hugely popular, even making the pop charts when it was released as a single in 1962. Although Riddle didn't write the legendary theme song to the Batman TV series, he scored many of the individual episodes. He also worked on shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Tarzan, Emergency!, and Barnaby Jones, among others. In 1967, he signed on as musical director of the popular Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and went on to serve in a similar capacity on early-'70s variety shows hosted by Julie Andrews and Helen Reddy. He earned another Oscar nomination for his work adapting the score of Paint Your Wagon (1969), and notched his first Oscar win for the score of 1974's The Great Gatsby. Meanwhile, Riddle continued to work with Sinatra on special projects, including the singer's 1971 farewell concert at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, and a 1974 comeback show at Madison Square Garden. As his music grew increasingly jazzy and driving, he also continued his own recording career on Sinatra's Reprise label for a time, later switching to LibertyUnited Artists and a succession of smaller imprints.
By the mid-'70s, Riddle was largely retired, a combination of changing musical tastes and health problems that necessarily curtailed his activities. He emerged in the early '80s to work with Linda Ronstadt on a succession of traditional pop albums: 1983's What's New, 1984's Lush Life, and 1986's For Sentimental Reasons. The former two both earned him Grammys for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals. Riddle's final completed project was Blue Skies, a 1985 collaboration with opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa. He passed away in Los Angeles on October 6, 1985.
--- Steve Huey, All Music Guide |
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